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The Education For All Handicapped Children Act

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The Education for All Handicapped Children act or PL 94-142 was proposed and signed into law in 1975 and began its effect in 1978. Prior to this act there was no national educational adaptation programs for children with learning disabilities. PL 94-142 was the first opportunity the government provided in order to set equality and improvement measurements for all children and for trying to identify those who are eligible for special education.
The federal government’s enactment of this law led the way for state implementation of programs for all students. Six Key mandates were issued as part of the Education for All Handicapped Children Act. The first mandate was that all schools have a zero reject or FAPE policy. This means that regardless of ability all children are eligible for Free Appropriate Public Education. School systems must accept students from six years of age to seventeen years of age. In some cases depending on the particular state this was extended to students as old as twenty-one or as young as three. The second mandate of the act includes a nondiscriminatory evaluation and identification. Assessments in this second mandate include first that they be done in the child’s first language so misdiagnosing a child would not occur. Also the test must be given and administered by qualified persons or an interdisciplinary team with experience on the particular suspected disability and directed to unambiguous areas of need so as to not demonstrate a discrimination

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